Air Idaho Rescue celebrates decade of saving lives in West Yellowstone
WEST YELLOWSTONE, Montana (KIFI) - Air Idaho Rescue is celebrating a decade of saving lives in the crown jewel of our nation's park system.
In the Yellowstone region, some areas are so remote it could take hours or days to reach a patient. Air rescue crews can reach those areas in a fraction of the time.
"We've had calls where we had to go pick up people in the backcountry and get them out of there," lead pilot for Air Idaho West Yellowstone Keith Grover told Local News 8. "It was a two day hike or a multiple hour, horseback ride to get out there. Where we're for us, it's a 45-50 minute flight in and then less than that to get out."
Pilot Delynn Randall, of the Idaho Falls crew, has been flying missions for Air Idaho for almost a decade. He says depending on the patient, being a rescue pilot can take you anywhere.
"We've gone all the way to Boston, across the country for patients before," Randall said. "But we can also load up and go land on a dirt airstrip somewhere in the backcountry."
Pilots and medical staff are trained to be ready to go in a moments notice. The crews say the training requires them to be the "top of the totem poles" in each of their perspective careers.
Ben Pearsen of the Idaho Falls crew, has over 20 years of nursing experience from the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center intensive care unit.
For the last five years, his intensive care unit has been 30,000 feet up. He says it was a sense of adventure and curiosity that drove him to the career shift.
"We can monitor temperatures, blood pressures, oxygen sats, heart rate. Basically everything you would see in the E.R. or an ICU.
Air Idaho's parent group, Air Methods, says their crews provides life saving care to over 100,000 people every year.
Pearsons describes the job as helping people on some of the worst days of their lives.
"We take care of kids, we take care of elderly people and everything in between," said Pearsen. "People that are very active, that may have experienced trauma. We get the opportunity, where we can hopefully ease some of that pain."
